August 5, 2015 -- Socialist Alternative, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- A fired-up crowd of more than 200 supporters of Socialist Alternative
Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant gathered in the Melrose Market
Studios in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood to hear the
result of the non-partisan primary for the Seattle City Council
election.

Many thousands more around Seattle and the nation were
anxiously awaiting the outcome of the first stage of the most important
electoral battle for the left in the United States in 2015, to hold the
seat Kshama won in 2013 as the first open socialist elected to a council
in a major urban area in decades.

At 8:15, a huge cheer went up as the announcement came in that Kshama
had received 49.9% of the vote, a full 15 percentage points ahead of
her nearest opponent, Pamela Banks, in a field of five candidates.

This result is a confirmation of the support among ordinary people in
Seattle for Kshama’s work on the council over the past 19 months. Most
important, she played a critical role in winning the first $15 minimum
wage ordinance in a major city. She used her position to help build,
with trade union support, a grassroots movement, 15 Now, which has now spread
to cities across the country.

Kshama has gone on to lead a series of other fights and is now
leading the struggle for rent control and building high-quality public
housing to address the massive affordability crisis in the city.
Recently 1000 people packed a town hall meeting to hear Kshama and
councilmember Licata debate a developer lobbyist and a politician
supporting the developers. That such a debate is taking place at all is a
measure of the political shift that has been created by Kshama’s being a
voice on the council for the struggles of working people. As Kshama
said in her speech tonight, “when we fight we win!”

Kshama’s excellent vote came in a challenging primary environment
where the electorate tends to be older and wealthier than in a general
election. Big business has been increasingly pouring money into the
campaigns of Kshama’s opponents, particularly that of Pamela Banks. They
want to put an end to the experiment in Seattle which could become a
“bad example” for other cities.

The corporate media has worked hard to portray Kshama as “divisive”.
In reality she has opened the doors of her office wide for working-class
campaigns, LGBTQ people fighting a rise in violence, immigrants and
others fighting a threatened 400% raise in rent in low-income housing,
and Black Lives Matter activists fighting police brutality. As Kshama
said tonight “what is really divisive is inequality”. It looks like a
lot of people in District 3 agree.

Kshama’s vote is likely to climb a bit in coming days as the late
ballots are counted (Seattle elections are mail in). The result reflects
a ferocious campaign with 600 volunteers, which knocked on 30,000 doors
and raised an incredible $265,000, not a single penny of which came
from big business.

This result clearly gives Sawant an excellent platform going into the
general election campaign. But, there is no room for complacency. Big
business is very likely to step up the attack and pour hundreds of
thousands of PAC money into this race, including for negative ads.

It might seem incredible that so much corporate money would flow into
one city council race, but big business is clear about what’s at stake.
They see the massive excitement created by the presidential campaign of
Bernie Sanders, who has taken up the call for a national $15 minimum
wage and who calls for a “political revolution” against the billionaire
class. There is a radicalisation under way in the US. Kshama’s fight for
re-election is the fight of all progressives across the country.